Pages

Thursday, June 23, 2011

When we started the perennial garden in front of our house four years ago, we wanted plants that are tough, can take the heat, are (relatively) drought-tolerant, and come back year after year. American prairie natives—think rudbeckias, liatris, not to mention the many prairie grasses—fit that bill just about perfectly. But my favorite prairie native is the echinacea, typically called “coneflower” although that name is also used for some other plants.

The good old purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) has been gracing gardens for centuries, but in the last 10 years several nurseries (especially Terra Nova Nurseries and ItSaul Plants) have been actively cross-breeding different echinacea species to develop colors and flower traits not seen in nature. Check out this interesting article on echinacea breeding.

The first of these new hybrids I bought was ‘Tiki Torch’ after seeing a blurb in Sunset Magazine. The orange color was almost too vibrant to be real. The plant I got was small and it didn’t really look like much the first year. It was better in the second year, and this year it has finally come into its own. The flowers positively glow and they retain their color beautifully. I also love the tall, strong stems that lift the flowers more than 3 ft. into the air.

Echinacea ‘Tiki Torch’

Echinacea ‘Tiki Torch’

Echinacea ‘Tiki Torch’

Echinacea ‘Tiki Torch’ with ‘Tomato Soup’ behind it (should be in bloom in another week)

After ‘Tiki Torch’ I bought a few others as liners, the ‘Tomato Soup’ in the photo above being one of them. A few didn’t make it (like ‘Pink Poodle’ but in that case it might be for the best). The survivors are now mature, including ‘Mac 'n Cheese’ in the next photo and ‘Fragrant Angel’ two photos down.

Echinacea ‘Mac ‘n Cheese’This one is smaller than expected, not even 2 ft. tall.

Echinacea ‘Fragrant Angel’I don’t really find it fragrant, but it does provide a nice touch of white amidst all the other colors in our perennial bed

Last year I added a rather funky looking echinacea to our collection: ‘Hot Papaya’, developed by Dutch breeder Arie Blom. Supposedly it’s the first-ever double orange/red echinacea. To me it looks a bit like a shaggy dog, but it’s definitely a striking plant on tall, sturdy stems.

Echinacea ‘Hot Papaya’

As much as I like these newer introductions with their flashy colors, my favorite echinacea is, oddly enough, a relatively short Echinacea purpurea hybrid one that’s 12 years old now. ‘Kim’s Knee High’ was developed by Kim Hawks, founder of Niche Gardens, and it combines the essence of the purple coneflower in shorter package (less than 2 ft. tall). Every summer, I fall in love with this cheery plant all over again.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Anticipation can be as exciting as the actual event you’re waiting for. That’s how I feel about flowers that are about to bloom. I love seeing the buds forming and developing, and even though green is the dominant color, there is a very special beauty inherent in this stage.

Braving the heat this morning (today is expected to be the first triple-digit day of the year), I took a few photos of plants that are getting ready to bloom. I hope you’ll enjoy this little voyage of discovery as much as I did.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Last year I put a bunch of echeveria offsets in a glazed strawberry pot, not expecting much. In fact, I never even really finished the pot by putting a feature plant in the top. Much to my surprise, the echeverias not only survived, they positively thrived, and now they are in bloom.

I had the pot in the full sun until just recently, but with the advent of summer and temperatures in the 90s, I thought it prudent to move it onto the front porch where it’s in half shade now.

Echeverias in full bloom

I love the way echeverias flower: Their flower stalks form a hook on top, which, when two stalks are side by side, often results in a heart. Weird and wonderful for sure.

Two flower stalks forming a heart

The flowers themselves are very small, less than ½" across

I recently planted offsets from our Aeonium ‘Kiwi’ in the top of the pot. Aeoniums are winter growers so they’re about to go dormant for the summer, but I expect good growth next fall. The yellow from the aeoniums will be a nice contrast against the blue of the pot.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

What’s surprising is not that it eventually died, but rather that it lived as long as it did. It was stuck on the edge of the bath tub in our guest bathroom where it was supposed to lend an exotic note to the décor. It was in a glass vase filled with pebbled and water, so in essence it was in water all the time (the recommended way of growing it). And for four years it was actually nice and green although it never saw sunlight—in fact the light level in that spot was pretty low. I’m not bemoaning its demise, but rather I’m singing its praises. It was as care- and maintenance-free as you could ever hope for.

Which brings us to its unfortunate common name. Most people think lucky bamboo is a bamboo, but it isn’t at all. Its Latin name is Dracaena sanderiana, and it’s an understory plant native to the rainforests of Cameroon. I have no idea how an African jungle plant became associated with feng shui but millions of lucky bamboos are sold every year. Apparently, lucky bamboo is one of the most popular feng shui cures—although this article, when talking about the wonderful properties of bamboo, completely ignores the fact that lucky bamboo isn’t a bamboo at all (which proves my point).

My lucky bamboo (Dracaena sanderiana) looking not so lucky

The shriveled skin came off as I pulled the plant out of the vase, releasing a rather unpleasant odor of decay

When you kill a lucky bamboo, does that mean your luck runs out? I sure hope not!

Maybe I’ll get another one at IKEA to cure the bad feng shui that no doubt exists now in our house.

Friday, June 17, 2011

2011 has been a great year in the garden so far. My personal highlight was following the miraculous development of our tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii) as it turned from a modest but attractive rosette of leaves 1 ft. high and 2 ft. across into a 5 ft. tall conical structure covered with hundreds, if not thousands, of small flowers within a space of seven months.

After the bloom peaked in mid-May, the flowers quickly dried up and fell off. By the end of May, the tower was completely bare.

May 18, 2011 June 11, 2011

However, the work done by untold numbers of bees was not in vain.

In full bloom on May 5, 2011

Untold numbers of seeds, neatly arranged in pairs of two, have formed all over the tower.

Seeds on June 15, 2011

What’s particularly interesting is that the seeds aren’t protected inside some sort of structure. Instead, they’re out in the open, exposed and seemingly vulnerable. But that must be the plant’s strategy for propagation. Maybe the exposed seeds are supposed to fall off as the plant sways in the wind? Or maybe they are supposed to be eaten by birds?

Eventually, the entire tower will fall over, scattering the seeds far and wide, but I wonder what will happen in the meantime? I’ll keep my eyes open—and my camera ready.

One thing is certain: There will be plenty of seeds to go around. If you’d like some, just let me know.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

In February, I brought home a couple of white-spined bunny ear cacti (Opuntia microdasys 'Albata') from a trip to Southern California. They were in very small 2-inch containers which they had severely outgrown. I repotted them and then put them in planters on top of the low fence around our front yard.

Bunny ears in 2" pot on 2/27/11

In our fence-top planter box on 4/13/11

In early May they started to put out flower buds, but due to unseasonably cool weather it took them a month to open up.

When looking at the photos, remember that these are small plants (7 inches tall) and the flowers are only 1½ inches across. Actually, their intimate size makes them even more beautiful to me.

A word of warning: As soft and cuddly as this little plant looks, the small white spines (glochids) are nasty. They come off at the slightest touch and stick to everything, including your skin and (rumor has it) your eyeballs. Handle with extreme care.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

It’s a clump-forming perennial from South Africa with attractive grass-like foliage and lavender-colored flowers on 2-foot stems that seem to last forever. It grows well in full sun and doesn’t seem to be fussy about soil. While it spreads by rhizome, it does so slowly and predictably, and it’s never invasive. In addition, it’s hardy to 20°F, allowing to be grown in much of California.

Sounds like the perfect plant for many situations, doesn’t it? Well, it is. It’s eternally popular, both with landscape designers and homeowners. Everybody seems to love it—except me. Don’t get me wrong: I like the leaves and I like the flowers, but I just cannot stand the smell.

I’m talking about society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea). While it isn’t in the immediate garlic and onion family (Allium), it is a distant cousin. The funny thing is that I do love onions and garlic—to me, they taste and smell fresh and, well, alive. Society garlic, on the other hand, smells like garlic that has died and started to rot. It would be the perfect scent profile for vampires if only they liked garlic. But maybe Bram Stoker got it all wrong, and they do.

Society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) featuring prominently in the landscaping of a condo complex up the street from us

Monday, June 13, 2011

Just last week I posted a blurb about the matilija poppy, a stunning shrub native to Southern California. I don’t typically write about the same plant twice in such a short period of time, but I just found a few more clumps near our house that are in full bloom. Since the flowers are at their absolute peak right now, I simply have to post these photos. Please bear with me and/or change the channel—I won’t hold a grudge. At least not for long.

These particular clumps are adjacent to a park and public tennis courts and must have been planted by the City of Davis. I’m very pleased that an obvious effort was made to use native plants appropriate for our climate.

Since these plants are on top of a slope, drainage is perfect. Matilija poppy prefers dry, sunny spots and cannot tolerate wet feet.

Romneya coulteri is indeed in the poppy family (Papaveraceae), so it is related both to the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and to the oriental (Papaver orientale) and opium poppy (Papaver somniferum).

The petals are like chiffon—they weight next to nothing and flutter in the slightest breeze.

A few interesting tidbits to prepare you for a stint on Jeopardy!: Matilija poppy has the largest flowers of any California native. It was nominated as the California state flower in 1890 but lost to the California poppy, which still holds that title today.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

After a longer and cooler spring than usual, summer has finally arrived, and our cacti are enjoying the abundance of sunshine.

Some of our smaller cacti bloomed a while ago (check this and this), and now it seems that our prickly pears (Opuntia sp.) are getting into the swing of things well.

The first prickly pear to bloom is a beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris) I picked up in January from UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. I believe they had propagated it from seed.

Opuntia basilaris is native to California and the Southwest. We saw quite a few in the wild in Joshua Tree National Park earlier this year. As far as prickly pears go, it’s one of the smaller species, growing to maybe 2 ft. in height. However, a clump can be quite wide and consist of hundreds of individual pads. The coloration is beautiful—a steel gray with a touch of purple, more pronounced in the winter. As the temperature increases, the color seems to become greener.

Opuntia basilaris in Joshua Tree National Park

Our small plant (about 1 ft tall) has had one flower bud for at least a month now but it wasn’t until three or four days ago when the thermometer climbed into the 80s that the bud started to grow larger. Today it finally opened up.

Our potted Opuntia basilaris in bloom

The color is hard to describe. Neon magenta comes to mind. It’s the kind of color your eye is drawn to from quite a distance.